The Pebble Mine should be terminated - once and for all. And when that day comes, when the only thing left of The Pebble Partnership is a mountain of legal bills, don't be surprised if the company's last gasp is an attempt to pass them on to U.S. taxpayers.

Deterioration continues in the financial condition of Northern Dynasty Minerals ("Northern Dynasty" or "NDM") -- a small Canadian exploration company, and the only remaining investor in the once formidable Pebble Limited Partnership ("Pebble").

While the Pebble Mine scheme may appear all but dead, Northern Dynasty's outside lawyers are alive, kicking, and doing very well indeed. As long as there is money to fund their pursuit of frivolous claims, look for this to continue.

Canadian exploration company Northern Dynasty Minerals is the only partner remaining in the once formidable Pebble Partnership - the poorly-funded proponent of the reckless scheme to build a massive mine in the headwaters of the world's greatest wild salmon fishery.

In its latest attempt to derail EPA's review of this potentially "catastrophic" project, Pebble paid former Defense Secretary William Cohen, The Cohen Group, and DLA Piper LLP to prepare an "independent" report that, unsurprisingly, confirms that EPA's review should be derailed. Follow the money.

In this time of global environmental crisis, it is dismaying to see a former Cabinet official of William Cohen's stature trade on his reputation to validate a review that reads like a press release of the company that hired him -- a company whose reckless mining project poses risks that are, according to EPA, potentially "catastrophic."

Over 70 years old, and he was always willing to make the trip -- whatever the trip, wherever it took him -- to talk, to testify, to tell the terrible story of the uniquely reckless scheme by international mining giants to poison the communities and wild salmon fisheries of Alaska's Bristol Bay with a gigantic copper and gold mine.

The company hasn't given up on its dreams to build a colossal mine at the headwaters of the world's greatest wild salmon fishery. Last January, with the sale of special warrants to existing investors, it raised about $15 million -- almost half of which came from a hedge fund in the Cayman Islands. Where is the money going? Not to mining but to lawyers and lobbyists.

Facts -- for example, numbers -- have never been a friend to the Pebble Mine. Last month added some new numbers to this list, and once again none of them was good news for the Pebble Limited Partnership (or its sole partner, Northern Dynasty Minerals).

Shame on anyone who would still believe the empty, self-serving, impossible promises of the Pebble Partnership and Northern Dynasty Minerals that they would never do to Alaska what Imperial Metals has done to British Columbia.

We've gone each year to fight the Pebble Mine -- a 21st century example of what the mining industry will do if given free reign, based on promises of safety, sustainability, and technological innovation that can't be kept and must not be believed.

EPA has the opportunity to protect both a unique natural resource and an economic powerhouse. It has the scientific basis, legal authority, and moral responsibility to protect Bristol Bay. And that's exactly what this diverse coalition of Alaska Natives, subsistence, commercial and sports fishermen, lodge owners, faith leaders and environmental groups will tell EPA next week.

The EPA released the final draft of its Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment this week. Its conclusion: Large scale mining development in Southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed poses a substantial risk to the region's ecosystem and its legendary salmon run.

Pebble Mine would carve a massive open pit out of the pristine watershed that feeds the most lucrative wild salmon runs in the world. Every year, tens of millions salmon return to the region, supporting bears, wolves, and whales as well as people.

Today, in yet another sign that the massive Pebble Mine is doomed, the London-based mining giant Rio Tinto publicly announced that it is considering "divestment" from the uniquely reckless project, proposed for the headwaters of the most productive wild salmon fishery in the world.

Yesterday Anglo American, a 50 percent partner in the Pebble Limited Partnership, announced that it is withdrawing from Pebble Mine, a giant gold and copper mine proposed at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

While it claims independence, Keystone has to concede that its client and financial benefactor is the very partnership that wants to build the Pebble Mine and claims already to have spent over half a billion dollars pursuing it.